DHS chief Jeh Johnson agreed with Chuck Todd that drones could make protecting 2016 presidential candidates more difficult. And, Johnson said as an example, he was a giving a speech recently when he looked up to see “a little drone flying over my head.”
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“I’m thinking about campaign events in 2016 and I’m thinking about you’re going to have — how panicked is Secret Service about this issue of the proliferation of drones? Because I’m sitting here wondering how hard it’s going to be to secure outdoor campaign events now in 2016. You’re going to have — just trying to distinguish between we in the news media are using drones now and we love these aerial shots,” said Todd. “Boy, i’m looking at it, if I’m Secret Service, I’m thinking, boy which drone is which. Is that an NBC drone or is that some crazy man that wants to do damage?”
Johnson responded, “When you refer to a drone in this context, Chuck, I’m assuming you’re referring to the smaller –”
Todd replied, “Look, I’m referring to any of the stuff. Because some of it’s small and some of it could be big. Look, in this case, it was smaller stuff.”
“This is something that U.S. NORTHCOM, me, Secret Service, Capitol Police, Metro police here in the Washington, D.C. area, we need to refine our protocols for airborne stuff in the national capital region to deal with what we’re referring to as the low and slow stuff,” said Johnson.
Todd replied, “You said just national capital region, but I’m thinking Des Moines, Iowa, Fair Grounds. I hate to be that kind of conspiratorial–”
“It is definitely an issue,” said Johnson. “I was giving a commencement address a couple weekends ago and in the middle I look up and I see a little drone flying over my head. Fortunately the Secret Service was on this guy in a second, but it was a little distracting in the middle of what I thought was an inspirational speech and all of a sudden I see this thing buzzing over my head. But the Secret Service was on him pretty quickly.”
